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Abdulai Iddrisu. 2013. Contesting Islam in Africa: Homegrown Wahhabism and Muslim Identity in Northern Ghana, 1920-2010. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. 279 pp.
The return of graduates from Saudi Arabia brought the establishment of a strong Wahhabi awareness in many Sub-Saharan countries in Africa where there is an already established Sufi followership leading to many intra-religious conflicts. Abdulai Iddrisu captured the scene in northern Ghana where tension usually emerged between the followers of the Wahhabi (Salafy) strict Sunni Islam and the Sufi, often resulting in conflicts. Wahhabism, founded in Saudi Arabia in the eighteenth century, could be traced to Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Wahhab advocating for a return to the Qur'an and Sunna by emphasizing the Tawhid (absolute monotheism) to straighten the Islamic creed rather than fiqh (jurisprudence) (p. 5). The emergence of the Wahhabi movement in Ghana dates to the 1940s, and it became popular in the 1960s through the effort of Al-Hajj Yusuf Soalihu Afa Ajoura (1890-2004).
The spread of the Sufi orders (tariqa) in Africa began with the Qadiriyya tariqa when Shaykh Sidi Muhammad al-Kunta became its spiritual guide in the fifteenth century. The eighteenth century witnessed an increase of the Qadiriyya tariqa in West Africa through the effort of the Kunta family. The Tijaniyya tariqa emerged in the nineteenth century through the effort of Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani (d. 1835). Two prominent shaykhs contributed to the spread of Tijaniyya in West Africa: the Senegalese Shaykh Al-Hajj Umar (d. 1784) and Shaykh Ibrahim Abdullahi Niasse (d. 1975). Shaykh al-Hajj Umar introduced the Tijaniyya tariqa into Hausaland, and through the Hausa diaspora it spread into Ghana and other places, mostly by traders (p. 36). By the end of the nineteenth century, Tijaniyya had become popular in Salaga Ghana, a prominent trading center. The war in 1892 dispersed many Muslim traders and scholars in Salaga. According to Jack Goody and Ivor Wilks (1968),...